This paper proposed a geolocation method for laser footprints based on the waveform matching. Specifically， for a single laser footprint， the simulated waveform based on airborne lidar point cloud data as prior measurements was matched with the captured waveform of the Gaofen-7 SLA. Within a laser track， the correlation coefficient of the matching results in successive footprints was calculated to further estimate the laser pointing and ranging information and re-geolocate the laser footprints in mountainous areas. A study area （the Utah State in USA） with local airborne lidar data was selected to verify the proposed method. With the mean surface slope of approximately 20°， the elevation accuracy of GaoFen-7’s laser footprints were improved from （2.45±2.93） m to （0.27±0.61） m， which proved the effectiveness of the proposed method.